


Bait

by faenova



Category: AR∀GO ロンドン市警特殊犯罪捜査官 | Arago
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Fluff, Gen, Illustrated, except the baby in question is a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2019-04-01 07:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13993182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faenova/pseuds/faenova
Summary: Arago's mistake, as usual, is sudden and life changing and completely avoidable. But completely permanent, now that it's happened.He accidentally brought an artificial construct to life.or: Arago accidentally makes himself a daughter.





	Bait

**Author's Note:**

> i never thought i would be the one posting original kid of canon character fic, but here i am.
> 
> just a oneshot for now, to be added to if i think of anything else with this character.

The thing is, children happen on accident all the time. But even when they do, there's almost a year of waiting and prep time to allow yourself to get used to the idea and to get anything you would need to bring a child into your home.

Arago's mistake, as usual, is sudden and life changing and completely avoidable. But completely permanent, now that it's happened.

He accidentally brought an artificial construct to life.

To be fair, he did consciously make it. There was a kidnapper, and his MO was little girls, and magic was involved... so he made a fake kid to get kidnapped and then he could find the creep and take him down.

Well he did, but he never properly shut down the construct. He thought he did, so he left it to its own devices. Or rather, in the corner of the living room until it turned back into a pile of clay and rocks and he could dump it somewhere and it would stop taking up space.

But instead of a pile of clay, he's sitting on the couch and staring down a roughly ten year old girl with his face who is very much still moving and functioning after days of total stillness and silence. It--she? is staring up at him with big gray-green eyes like his, through a long mess of white hair that has quite literally never been brushed since she was made. She stands ramrod straight in front of him, with no personality in her stance at all.

Except, she does have a personality. Or the beginning of one, because he can see very faint colors swirling around her chest against the plain dress he found for her at the secondhand store. Only about two or maybe three colors are visible if he squints. But they're there. An aura.

And she said something to him, without prompting. He thought he gave her instructions only to speak when prompted to do so, to prevent questioning. But he's in so much shock that it sounded like static. "I--I'm sorry," he stutters. "Can you say that again?"

"Yes."

"I mean, say it again."

"Okay. Am I allowed to move from my spot, Dad?"

Arago makes a very undignified wheezing noise and doubles over. He forgot he programmed it to call him dad for this whole mess.

"Are you alright?" it-- _she_  asks. He tries not to be unsettled. This is normal enough. He traded with a witch for some instructions on how to make an artificial construct, which came with a set of rules for the construct to follow. Safety and well-being of the creator was on that list, he's sure of it.

"I'm... fine," he hesitates. This is fine.

She looks him over, like she's analyzing his aura. "You didn't answer my question earlier."

"Uh..." he blinks. "Yeah. Sure, do what you want."

The golden-yellow which he wasn't sure was even there flares brighter against the other two colors. She looks around the room blankly, the yellow still burning bright. Then she sits down on the couch, next to Arago.

She stays sitting there, even when he closes his laptop and gets up to leave. She does, however, ask where he's going. Which is definitely not normal for what she is. He tells her he needs to patrol and will be back eventually.

And when he comes back, she's... asleep.

He doesn't think constructs normally do that.

He texts Oz.

 

 

 

> -whayd u kno abt contrsudts?
> 
> \---------------Contracts?
> 
> -consteuct  
>  -construct  
>  -artificual ppl
> 
> \---------------Just that they're hard to make
> 
> -ok well i made 1
> 
> \---------------Impressive  
>  \---------------But why
> 
> -i nedded bait
> 
> \---------------And?
> 
> -and i think it came to lfie  
>  -life  
>  -fuck
> 
> \---------------They're supposed to do that
> 
> -no fk ti didnt have colors and now it had colors  
>  -an ara  
>  -aura
> 
> \---------------Oh  
>  \---------------Damn
> 
> -what do i do???
> 
> \---------------Idk
> 
> -oz pls  
>  -its slepign on th couch i dont thjnk theyre supposed to sleep?
> 
> \---------------I can come over tomorrow after work if you want
> 
> -ye pls tbnak

He peeks out again at the ratty couch the construct is sleeping on. He doesn't want to move her, but he feels bad leaving her there. He tears the last clean blanket off his bed and gently lays it over her. She doesn't move, or even breathe, which is still unnerving. With the blanket on her, he can't even see the faint colors in her chest. He would say she looks dead, but even dead things have an afterimage of an aura surrounding them.

It's hard for him to sleep that night.

~

Oz is at his house five minutes before Arago is. "She was still asleep when I left," Arago says as he unlocks the door. "I'm not sure what she'll be doing now."

The answer, apparently, is sitting on the living room floor with Guri. Guri briefly looks at him when the door opens, but the construct doesn't. She sits perfectly still, and quietly accepts something Guri hands her, which Arago thinks is part of the oven that Guri dismantled last week. She turns it over in her hands a few times before giving it back when Guri makes an impatient noise.

Oz squats down to their level and asks, "What are you doing?"

Guri makes a clicking sound that Arago recognizes as 'don't touch' and the construct stares at Oz, unblinking. Arago doesn't bother translating for Oz, he's sure the guy can understand even less sentient animals on aura alone.

"Little miss," Oz tries to get the attention of the construct again. "Can you tell me what you're doing?"

She flicks her gaze to his chest, a few other places on his body, then back to his face. "Are you like me?"

Oz snorts. "No, I just like to hide. I'm human, see?" He offers a hand, and lets a few colors seep through his mask on his palm.

She grabs his hand and stares intently before poking it a few times. Her colors hum brighter, like she's satisfied with what she's found. She turns back to Guri and his pile of dismantled things. Oz closes his hand into a fist a few times, and his aura once again goes silent and unreadable.

Oz stands up and motions Arago into the kitchen. "So, how off-script is it?"

"She's always supposed to answer direct questions, and never ask any. That's the second... no,  _third_  she's asked since yesterday."

"Well. I can't give a professional opinion on constructs. But her aura indicates she's completely sentient, if... young. Most things with an aura that small and undefined aren't even born yet. She's probably relying heavily on scripts to function, even if she's breaking away."

" _Fuck_ ," Arago whispers.

"Congratulations," Oz says with a shit-eating grin. "It's a girl."

~

Oz leaves, eventually. After Arago has an anxiety attack and Oz calms him down. And once Arago confirms that he isn't going to try and dismantle her now that she's gained sentience, Oz helps him write a list of things he needs to get to take care of a... child.

Top of the list is a name.

He never actually gave her one, for obvious reasons. But now it's a glaring problem. He's never been good a naming things--he only picked "Arago" because it sounded close to his deadname, after all. He shoves that problem to the back of his mind for now and asks, "Are you hungry?" without much confidence. "Do you even need to eat?"

She blinks, and her colors scramble in confusion.

"Yeah, okay. Dumb question, neither of us knows what to expect." But if she needs sleep because gaining a personality is taking a toll on her energy, then she might eventually need to eat too. He's not sure. "Do you want to try to eat something?"

Her colors continue to swirl for a moment before they settle. The expression on her face doesn't change. "Yes."

All he has is various candies that he can also eat, but he lets her pick. It takes a good four minutes before she finally points at a chocolate bar.

He watches her while she nibbles on the chocolate. The yellow burns brighter at first, then dulls down again, but stays more prominent against her other colors. He has to move her hair out of her face when it gets caught in her chocolate and she almost eats it. Next order of business is to brush that mess.

He tries to let her do that herself, but she nearly yanks a fistful of her own hair out before Arago offers to take over. Her hair is difficult to tame, it feels stronger than normal human hair. But when he's done, she looks presentable again, like when he first made her. She looks almost identical to him, and now he wonders if he shouldn't have done that. He doesn't even know if albinism is genetic, but at least no one will question that she's his. The only glaring difference is that her hair is wavy, like

Like his mom's.

Now, there's an idea.

"What do you think of the name Elle?" he asks.

"That's a letter," the construct says as she stares at herself in the mirror.

"It's spelled with four letters," Arago corrects her.

"It sounds like a letter," she says again.

"Is that a no?" he asks. He runs the brush through her long hair a couple more times before he puts it back on the sink counter.

"...no."

Arago sighs.

His mother's name was Eleanore. He only remembers it because the funeral, he's not sure if his dad ever called her that. It sounds so stuffy, he can't imagine using it for the construct--for his... daughter.

He kinda inhales wrong at that revelation and ends up choking for a minute.

"Are you okay?" she asks.

"Fine," he coughs. "All good here."

~

"Ella?" he asks, as he makes a grocery list. He hasn't gone shopping for food in years, he thinks. "Or Ellie?" he adds as an afterthought.

The construct doesn't look up from her own paper and pen that she requested when she saw him writing. "No." She hasn't actually written anything on the paper yet, but she holds the pen in her hand like she's about to and the baby blue in her tiny aura is shining brighter than the others now.

"Any reason why?"

"I don't want it."

And that's as good a reason as any, he supposes. Her favorite phrase of the night is "I want" and "I don't want" and her aura gets bright every time her simple requests are met. She hasn't quite grasped why she does or doesn't want things yet, but it's incredible progress for something that isn't supposed to have opinions.

The grocery list has turned into a list of names. Most of them starting in E, because now he's stuck on that. E for Elle. E for Ewan.

"How about you look at these and tell me if you want any of them?" he asks her, scooting the paper to her side of the table. "If you don't, we'll keep looking."

She looks at it, looks at Arago, and says "Cereal isn't a name."

"It's--no, it's not. Uh," he circles the names on the bottom half of the paper. "Just these. Not the stuff on top."

She looks back down, and places her pen on the table. She traces a finger down the list, stopping and considering each name written on it. Arago pulls out his phone and starts making his grocery list on there instead. He doesn't want to find more paper.

A good fifteen minutes later, when Arago thinks he has a decent enough grocery list, the construct suddenly says "Elena."

He blinks. He didn't actually think she would pick one of them this soon. "That's what you want to be called?"

"I want it," she confirms.

"Elena," Arago says again, trying it out. "I like it. Okay then, your name is Elena."

Elena doesn't smile, but she stares at him with wide green eyes and the yellow in her chest glows the brightest he's seen so far.


End file.
